He's A Magic Man (The Children of Merlin)

by Susan Squires

  “Is that so bad? Plus it might work some more of that alcohol out of your system.”

  He didn’t respond. But he started hooking up the machine. “So, where are you from?”

  “LA. Well, Palos Verdes, actually.” The official name was Palos Verdes Estates, but she didn’t want to tell him that.

  “That’s not LA. LA is not even in the same league. More expensive than Beverly Hills I read somewhere.” Guess he knew anyway. He sat down at the machine.

  “Not all of it. My family has a house there.” It was enough of a house that it had a name, but he’d never hear it from her.

  “Do you like living there?”

  “Sure. It’s by the beach. House is just a little crowded, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, like two kids to a bed?”

  She laughed. “No. But when you have six brothers and sisters, it still seems crowded. Plus, my father works from home so he can be there for the family. And my mother ... well, she’s sort of a force of nature—everywhere at once.”

  She saw a look of sadness maybe, or regret, slip over his face. He hid it by testing the settings of the Bowflex. “Good problem to have,” he said, pulling on a couple of handles. “And your father does what? Mail-order fulfillment? Earn thousands working from home....”

  Uh-oh. “He, uh, works with nonprofits. Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, you know, that kind of thing.”

  He shot her a glance, like he knew she wasn’t telling the whole truth. Why didn’t she want him to know how privileged her upbringing had been? Because he lived in a tiny, run-down cabin? Or because it made her seem shallow and naïve?

  “So tell me about your brothers and sisters.”

  She had to smile, thinking about them. “That’s a soap opera. And it would take a while.”

  “I’ve got to take my mind off my screaming muscles and my headache for about forty-five minutes here and the TV’s broken.”

  She glanced over and saw him take his position for his first exercise, arms out to the side, hands up. He pulled the bows in toward the center. That meant his abdominals tensed and his pectorals flexed and his shoulders.... Oh, God, she was staring. “Uh....” She ripped her gaze back to the counter where the four small pompano fish glared up at her with round, unseeing eyes. Well, telling him about her family wasn’t telling him about her. So it was probably okay. “Uh, my oldest brother is Kemble. Tris calls him ‘the Prince of Wales’ because he’s in line to take over from Father. But Father will probably die in the traces. Anyway Kemble’s good at the business end. He’s kind of a computer whiz....”

  “Older? How old?”

  The mesmerizing flex of muscles was making Drew’s brain freeze. “Thirty-one.”

  “And he still lives at home?” Dowser sounded derisive.

  “He’s not a mama’s boy or anything. Living where he works cuts the commute.”

  “All right. I give you that.” Dowser paused between sets. He was trembling a little. And a light sheen of sweat already shone on his body. Drew thought she might faint.

  She’d better keep talking. “Next is Tristram.” She couldn’t help the fond grin. “Tris was the bad boy. Has a body shop where he rebuilds vintage cars and bikes. Not exactly what my parents had in mind as a career. Father rode him a little hard growing up and to be honest, Tris was enough to try anybody’s patience. But he’s just amazing with engines.” She shook her head, still astonished that they’d never really known what Tris was up to until he had fallen in love and gotten his magic. Tris could power engines. He was some kind of a conductor, taking power directly from the earth. Of course, she couldn’t tell Dowser that.

  “So, he and the old man fight?”

  She nodded. “He left home for a year. Wandered around on his bike. We thought we might have lost him.”

  “But he came home.”

  Now she grinned. “He found Maggie, a rodeo rider who’s more than his match. She has an incredible way with animals.” Calm was her power. Couldn’t say that either. Drew shook herself. “That was a surprise. But they’re great together. No more drugs or excessive drinking for Tris. And he and Father kind of came to an understanding.”

  “At least they don’t live at home,” Dowser said, starting his second set.

  “Over the garage,” she agreed.

  “Wow.”

  “Next in line is me.”

  *****

  This was where it got interesting. He wanted to know about her. But best start slow. “So where do you go to college?”

  She looked a little bit miffed and Dowser remembered dimly that he’d chided her about being a college girl. He tried to look apologetic and shrugged. “You do go to college, right?”

  “I was doing graduate work at Brown until last year. Then I switched to UCLA.”

  “To be closer to home or closer to a boyfriend?”

  Shame made her blush. He thought she wouldn’t answer, and he wondered what button he’d inadvertently pushed, but she took in a breath and said, “Closer to home.”

  Okay. Boyfriend. But it hadn’t worked out, thank goodness. “Studying?”

  “History. My thesis is on Dark Age Celtic cultures.” She gave him a rueful half smile and a shake of her head. “Though I just did a special commission on the history of the tarot.”

  He must have looked curious because before he could say anything, she held up a hand. “Don’t ask. Mother is a little obsessed with the tarot.”

  Someone who believed in divination cards in a family like that?

  “After me,” she said, skipping over the part he cared about most, “it’s Keelan.”

  Dowser listened to her go through her whole family, including the orphan surfer kid her parents had taken in, as he pumped out reps of the various exercises. She was comfortable talking about them, but not about herself. He understood that. Though she couldn’t possibly have the kind of complex mess of a life he had. She was moving around the kitchen, chopping things, stirring something in a chipped bowl. What a family: an artist, a musician, a computer whiz, a guy who invented a way to make used oil power engines, a champion surfer. She told him more about herself than she knew, because the love her family shared shone through every proud comment she made about them. And it was obvious they were wealthy.

  Dowser was jealous.

  Not about the wealth. He’d moved on from money. He was jealous of the love. Not so much love in his life, until Alice. And now even that was gone, except in nightmares, dreamed in the bleak colors of despair.

  All the while Drew talked and cooked, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. He’d thought the workout would take his hard-on down for the count. But he’d start to be okay, and then she’d turn her head and he’d see the slender outline of her neck or her collarbone and he’d have to fight down his dick all over again. Or he’d see her toes, painted a vibrant red, or the shape of a breast as she reached for something. His dick didn’t seem to be particular. Alice would be ashamed.

  Or angry.

  When Alice had told him to be nice to Drew she probably hadn’t meant that he should fuck the girl. But that’s just what his dick wanted to do. Images of Drew spreading those pale thighs....

  “So what about you?” she asked him as she bent down to get a baking pan for the fish. What a view, with that shapely butt filling out her jeans.... Damn. This was not normal. He hadn’t thought about women at all since he’d lost the only one who mattered to him. What was happening here? Was it the effects of detox?

  He realized he’d just been sitting on the Bowflex staring at her. “Uh, what about me?”

  “You have family?”

  “Nah.”

  He could see her wanting to ask about Alice, but she didn’t dare. Good. He was too raw for that. She decided on, “Have you always been a sailor?”

  “No. Two years or so.”

  She came around the counter and sat on the arm of the love seat, apparently zeroing in for more questions. Too close. Apparently too close for her too, because
she immediately got up and went to sit at the table. He was probably pretty aromatic after his workout. “So ... so you just decided to open a treasure hunting business.”

  “Yeah.” He got up and clipped the Bowflex to the overhead pulls. With Alice gone there was nothing left, and sailing away to the last point before the open ocean of the Caribbean seemed like a good idea.

  “So, what did you do before that?”

  He looked at her, tempted to just shut her down. But he didn’t. She’d stayed with him through some pretty horrible hours, and though she’d tied him up, though detox had been her idea, not his, and though he still wasn’t sure it was a good idea, she’d been generous and courageous. She thought she owed him because of the bar. Now maybe he owed her for more than just the shotgun rescue. “Army.” He sat down on the bench and reached for the pull bars.

  “Really?” She put her chin in her palm. Damn. That made her lovely neck stretch. “I’ve never known anyone in the military. What did you do in the army?”

  He couldn’t actually say, “none of your business.” Not to her. Even though he never talked about it and didn’t want to now. Oh, well. She wouldn’t know what it meant anyway. “Delta Force. Operator.”

  She mulled that for a minute as he began his set. “Bet that doesn’t mean you worked a phone exchange.”

  His lips wouldn’t behave, even though he didn’t want to smile. “Nope.”

  “And you’re not going to elaborate, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “At least you can tell me your name. I mean your real one. I doubt your father was Mr. Dowser senior.”

  No, not by a long shot. “That’s just what people around here call me. Stupid jerks.”

  “How did they pick that name?”

  “I told you. I find things.” She didn’t get that he meant he could find anything he could visualize, anywhere, anytime. And he wasn’t going to tell her about being psychic. That would just make her think he was still delusional from the booze. He finished his set.

  A light went on in her eyes. He liked that effect. The gray glowed like a lighthouse through the fog. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “Like the people who find water with a forked stick.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You mean that’s how you find treasure?”

  “As long as they know at least one object in the stash. I need a picture or something, maybe a really good description, so I can visualize it.”

  “I don’t believe it. You’re running some kind of scam.”

  She sounded so sure of herself, it rankled. “Okay. You lost anything lately?”

  Her lips hardened into a perverse determination. “You’re on. I lost my favorite lipstick.”

  “Tube?”

  She nodded.

  “Color of tube?”

  “Brushed gold.”

  He closed his eyes. Too easy. “Under the passenger’s seat in your rental car.”

  “You’re guessing.”

  “Go look.”

  She stared at him for a minute before she stood abruptly and marched out the door. He grinned and started another set.

  She came back into the shack in a meditative mood, rolling the tube of lipstick between her graceful fingers. “So how does that work?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “No idea.” Technically true. And he wasn’t going to answer any more questions about something he had shared so intimately with Alice.

  “I see you’re not going to talk any more about it. You going to tell me your real name?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then I’m going for a walk. Is there a beach? Haven’t seen many of those around here.”

  He pointed to the rear of the cabin. “Through those trees.”

  She bounced up and headed for the screen door. “I’ll be back in a while to put dinner on.” The screen door slammed behind her. “And I’m taking the distributor cap with me,” she called as she trotted down the porch steps.

  Whew. Maybe now his body would give him at least one kind of respite. He realized that she’d crept into his world in the last days. He talked to her like he never talked to anybody anymore. She was exerting some attraction over him that made him betray the memory of Alice. That was the last thing he wanted.

  So in spite of the fact that he actually had grown to kind of like the naïve little rich girl with the vibrantly red toes, or maybe because of it, he was going to have to get rid of her.

  Alice would just have to understand.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Drew was escaping just in the nick of time. She could pretend to talk to Dowser calmly, but it was all an act. An act that took everything she had to maintain. Her body had been doing throbby, dripping backflips all the time she had been making conversation.

  She pushed her way through the brush. The path was built up with small stones to keep it dry in the squish of decaying vegetation. Above her, pines and oaks she associated with more temperate climes were interspersed with some species that looked way more tropical.

  What was up with her really sexual reaction to this guy? Sure, he was good looking and well built, but really! He was nothing to that guy in her Medieval History class at Brown, and she hadn’t gone all gaga over him, even when he’d been obviously pursuing her.

  This whole thing just didn’t seem natural.

  And maybe it wasn’t, if he really was her destiny. Maybe this was the instant attraction her mother and father had felt, or Tris and Maggie.

  That sent a thrill through her until she realized he probably didn’t feel it back. Sure, she’d seen a hard-on. But guys got those all the time. She’d lived with four teenage boys. And this guy was still way in love with his dead wife. Depressing.

  She came out onto the sand and took off her shoes. It wasn’t a wide beach, just a crescent cut into the mangrove swamp lined with crushed white rock and sand. There were no waves, which was strange. The water was a translucent aqua color that didn’t seem natural. At the north end of the little beach she found a well-worn trail and turned in. Maybe the heat and the sound of the birds would soothe her overstimulated mind and body.

  The way he could find things was unnatural too. Or not. He must have seen where she had put the distributor cap. And the lipstick had been a lucky guess.

  No it hadn’t. She stopped in the middle of the trail.

  The whole concept just jumped out at her, fully formed.

  Finding things was his power. Why hadn’t she seen it before? And he’d been doing it long before he met her. Oh, my God. Alice had raised his power.

  Drew’s insides contracted. And he’d raised Drew’s. That must mean he was her destiny, though she couldn’t say she loved him. She wanted to fall into bed with him, but that was different. And he was never going to love Drew. He’d met his destiny and lost her. Destiny had played a very nasty trick on both of them. They were both so screwed.

  Well, I was successful, she thought bitterly. She’d gotten him sober, and now she knew the truth. Drew could practically see the pity in her mother’s eyes when she found out Drew’s predicament. “You can’t fix everything, Drew.”

  Drew had never felt so lost in her life.

  Oh well, she told herself as her eyes filled. He’s way too old, way too prickly and sarcastic, and not someone I could love anyway.

  She scuffed along the sandy path. What to do now? Slink home and go for a massage at the Ritz-Carlton with Jane? That felt so wrong in her gut it almost made her nauseous.

  Then what was right, for God’s sake? If her mother were here, Drew would almost be tempted to ask her to throw the damned tarot cards. She felt that confused and directionless.

  Okay. This wasn’t like her. Drew Tremaine was optimistic and directed. She just needed to see this whole situation from another angle.

  Maybe he wasn’t the One. Maybe he was just a stop on the way to the man who was her destiny. Maybe he had a relative, or maybe Alice had a brother. This whole attraction thing was just a mistake, because he had the gene from Merlin. But he
might not be the only one with the gene. She might still find someone she could make a life with. Did he know why he could find things? If he knew about the DNA, it would sure make it a lot easier to just ask him if he knew anyone else who had it. If he didn’t know he had magic, she’d just sound crazy.

  She’d have to find out what he thought about what he was. And what Alice must have been. She’d have gotten a power too, when they had fallen in love. That thought hurt.

  But her destiny had to be here somewhere. She just had to figure out where in this pile-of-dung situation she could find the pony.

  So she wasn’t going home. Not yet, by God.

  She started down the trail again and heard a car go by. The road was close. She found a branching path that cut over to it, and walked back toward the cabin as the afternoon waned. Clouds were piling up in the west and the day was darkening prematurely. If she weren’t careful, she’d get a tropical soaking. She hurried her step, thinking all the while about how she could broach the subject of magic DNA with Dowser.

  She had to look carefully for the track that led down to the cabin, even though she knew roughly where it should be. As she turned into the tunnel through the vines hanging from the trees, she noticed that the rusted mailbox mostly concealed in the foliage was stuffed to the gills. The door wouldn’t even close. Glancing at the sky, she scooped the contents into her arms. Looked like Dowser didn’t take too much interest in his mail.

  She couldn’t help but glance at the pile as she walked up the track. What wasn’t junk mail all seemed to be business envelopes from the same place. Odd. Her steps slowed. They were from someplace called Redmond, Inc. in New York. The paper visible through the window of the envelope sort of looked like a check. That was a common way of getting people to open junk mail—make them think there was a check inside. But so many envelopes sent from the same place? They weren’t junk mail.

  Biting her lip, she pulled out the top envelope. This was so bad. But she held it up to what was left of the light anyway. She couldn’t tell anything. She should not be going through Dowser’s mail. She resolutely quickened her step until she got to the cabin.